Inspirational Passage of the Day
Whitman in a way compares grass as a human society. He mentions that grass is “a uniform hieroglyphic” (13) and they “alike” (14). In scientific terms, all humans are similar to each other and the only aspect that makes each person different is their personality and race. But even if people are racially different from each other physically, every person is the same internally as Whitman puts it: “Growing among black folks as among white, “Knuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the / same, I receive then the same” (15-17). The “same” can also be interpreted in a different way such as referring to the fact that every person regardless of their race, job, or status will go through life (give) and die in the future (receive).
Another example of Whitman's comparison of grass to humans is when he says, “It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, / It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,” (20, 21). Grasses all start out as a seed and will not grow unless its owner takes care of it. This can refer to humans as well since babies cannot take care of themselves and must rely on adults to grow and develop. This cycle of life is repeated for generations to come as seen in lines 23 and 24 where Whitman compares the growth of grass to that of a human child, “soon out of their mother's laps, / And here you are the mothers' laps”. As children once grew up with parents, in the near future, they themselves will become parents as well.
In the middle of the poem, Whitman stops celebrating the joy of procreation and focuses more about the philosophy of death. Death is part of every day life and feared by many people. Whitman tells the child to not fear death because he says, “there really is no death” (38). He considers the grass that grows among the graves in the cemetery to be the “beautiful uncut hair of graves” (18). Even among death, Whitman considers life beautiful. He tells the child that even after a person “ceased” (41) to live, they still continue to live after death. What became of the old women and men is something a child should not think about. Each person have their own thought but Whitman says that we should all focus on one thing:
What we do
We love technology. We love spending time on all the social networks, blogging, chatting and texting just as much as you. We want to know about your cat, your lunch and your ex, and we like it. It's great entertainment.
But at the end of the day, we know nothing beats the simple act of meeting up with friends and sharing a drink. That's what we love most. So we created Brightkite to make it easier to do just that.
Brightkite is a simple way to keep up with friends and places. We created a product that lets you instantly see what's going on with the people who matter most to you, your friends. So check out what they're up to, meet new friends along the way and get out and enjoy your neighborhoods.
The Team
OK so we admit most of us weren't picked first for the kickball team on the elementary school grounds. So we put together our own team of hard-working, creative folks who were better on the laptop, than the black top. Brightkite consists of our founders, Jonathon Linner, JP Virolainen and Rob Lawson, and a passionate bunch of role players helping to grow the Brightkite community everyday
Company Info
Brightkite is a privately held startup with offices in Burlingame, CA, Denver, CO and Helsinki, Finland. We started back in October 2005 on some odd Monday. We are funded by Azure Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, NEA, and Nexit Ventures.